


No Sleep, Cried For Weeks, Favourite Ex

by piratequeenofgreenthings



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, Background Josh Lyman/Donna Moss, M/M, but not a josh/sam ending, like kinda a happy ending???, or like a look inside his head, sort of a character study of sam I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 01:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19780075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratequeenofgreenthings/pseuds/piratequeenofgreenthings
Summary: It always comes back to Josh for Sam, no matter what happens if Josh comes running, Sam drops everything.A one-shot musing on Sam's feelings for Josh and why he keeps coming back.





	No Sleep, Cried For Weeks, Favourite Ex

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to the song Favourite Ex by Maisie Peters and it just struck me a such a Sam/Josh song from Sam's perspective and I wrote this while listening to it on repeat. It's pretty angsty but I hope you'll enjoy it.

It always came back to Josh for Sam. No amount of Lisa’s or Laurie’s or Ainsley’s could ever change the fact that when Josh came running Sam dropped everything. Every damn time. Josh came running yelling about New Hampshire and Sam was suddenly on a campaign tour bus Lisa’s returned engagement ring in his pocket still warm. Josh got shot and Sam never saw Laurie again, the graduation card he forgot to give her sat on his mantelpiece for weeks until eventually, he threw it out along with the shirt still stained from Josh’s blood. 

Ainsley was different. Sam thought that maybe just maybe he could forget about Josh’s brown eyes and his dimples as he watched Ainsley’s blonde hair swinging behind her as she walked. They both ended up in California and Sam found himself buying her a diamond ring and planning a wedding but then Josh turned up in California and Sam was prepared to hold onto another diamond ring until he forgot that he had ever wanted to be married. But this time the blonde woman wearing the diamond ring Sam bought followed him to DC and the ring was still there. Sam found himself staring at it a lot just waiting for Ainsley to hand it back to him, he also found himself staring at Josh a lot his mind wandering to dark nights years ago when it was just them and the secret they shared. 

They postponed their wedding when Josh proposed to Donna. Sam said he wanted to properly patch things up with his father before they married but in truth, he didn’t know what he wanted.

She gave the ring back eventually and left the White House and Sam was alone again.

And it all came back to Josh. 

No matter how many women Sam dated, no matter how many men he met in dark bars, it always came back to Josh. Always.

He replayed their worst fights in his head. He replayed their best nights. He gave a speech at Josh’s wedding and danced with Donna. He cried in the dark silence of his bedroom and laughed with his staff the next morning. 

Maybe sometimes you didn’t get what you wanted, maybe sometimes love doesn’t always find a way. Was it ever even love? Sam wasn’t so sure these days but there wasn’t anyone he could talk to about this, Donna was his best friend but she was the last person he could mention this to and he sure as hell wasn’t ever bringing it up to Josh again. He kept it quiet his own little secret and life went on, as it did.

His memories got hazier, certain moments stand out amongst the fog. He dated here and there but never committed. He couldn’t, he’d spent so long waiting for Josh to commit to him that once he accepted he never would, he realized he did not know how to commit to anyone else.  
He got a cat that he named Walt, (‘after Walt Whitman? You’re such a speechwriter’ Josh laughed when he told him conveniently forgetting the time Sam had spent reading him Walt Whitman poetry after they first met) Walt was his companion now and Donna worried that he was lonely as she kept trying to set him up on dates. His feelings faded, he no longer pined horrendously for Josh, what once was a raging fire within him was now the dying embers of a bonfire, a half-hearted leap in his heart when he saw him, an I-would-if-you-ever-asked-but-you-don't-so-I’m-moving-on feeling. His brain sometimes still entertained the idea but mostly he just kept himself to himself, doing his job and living his life.

And then Josh came running once more asking him to run for president.

And Sam dropped everything to say yes, he didn’t even think of saying no. Not when Josh was looking at him like that.  
It always came back to Josh, no matter how hard he tried to hide from it, it always came back to him.

He did an interview with Vanity Fair, a journalist shadowed him for a month on his campaign and he found it quite fun at first until he asked about Josh.

‘Your relationship with Josh Lyman has spanned decades, what makes this relationship different from the other candidates and their campaign managers?’

It was a simple question. A good question. But one Sam struggled to answer. He floundered helplessly, the twenty-something wide-eyed journalist staring back at him expectantly waiting for him to say something, anything.

‘Josh is my oldest…friend.’ He said slowly stumbling over the word friend. ‘He’s also the smartest person I know and a world-class political mind. This campaign has been years in the making and I’d wager that if you asked Josh himself, he’d tell you that he has been planning this campaign for years probably from the moment the idea came to him.’

‘And when do you think that was?’

Sam didn’t answer his mind replaying nights long gone before Bartlet, before Lisa. Josh’s head in Sam’s lap, (‘you could run for president, Sam’), Sam’s hands running through Josh’s hair (‘don’t be ridiculous Josh’), Josh sitting up and holding Sam’s face staring into his eyes (‘I’m serious, Sam. It’s gonna happen’).

‘I-I don’t know.’ He says eventually, ‘You’d have to ask him.’

The journalist moves on but Sam is still stuck on memories of yesteryear. Memories of Josh, it always comes back to Josh. He wonders if that’s what his tombstone will read;

Samuel Norman Seaborn  
It Always Comes Back to Josh 

It would certainly be accurate. He wishes he could escape his feelings but they’ve become part of him now so deeply entwined with who he is that cannot imagine who he would be without them. He should write poetry that historians can debate over. He can imagine it now, half arguing that Josh was just a close friend and half arguing that they were lovers. It happened to Shakespeare. It happened to Hamilton. It could happen to him too. No one would even see them until he died if he hid them well enough.

He doesn’t write poetry. It feels wrong like he’d be doing Donna a disservice somehow. He just wallows in his own self-pity hiding it from his friends. CJ asks him one day why he never found anyone. Sam shrugs;

‘Just didn’t. No particular reason.’

He watches her eyes flick over to Josh. She knows, of course she knows, she’s CJ. But she doesn’t press him further.

The more Sam thinks on it he wonders if he truly craves a relationship with Josh, is it not just habit that keeps him dropping everything for him? If Josh turned up at his door tomorrow asking him to run with him would he? Is that not what he’s wanted since he was twenty-four and alone in his apartment, after Josh had told him that it was summer fling nothing more, he’s not even gay, and he wants to work in politics and it’s over Sam stop trying to convince me. 

And then he meets Julian. Harvard and Yale Law graduate turned bookshop owner. Julian who has sparkling green eyes, green not brown, and jet black hair, black not ginger. Julian who listens in awe to what Sam has to say, Julian who engages in debates with Sam for the hell of it, Julian who Sam asks out on a date sending Josh into a frenzy before he remembers that Sam is not the president anymore and it’s not a PR nightmare. Julian who Sam marries in front of twenty guests with Josh front row and centre. And Sam’s heart doesn’t do the tiniest somersault when his eyes land on Josh who is sitting front row and centre, still smarting slightly after Sam asked Toby to be his best man. Sam lets himself grieve ever so slightly for twenty-four-year-old Sam who wished that he could one day get this but with Josh, not Julian. But he’s stood here with Julian, not Josh and the world hasn’t ended so he figures he did alright. 

Josh grabs him to chat near the end of the night while Julian spins Donna around the dance floor.

‘I’ve had an idea for a non-profit.’ Josh begins and Sam knows, he just knows, that once Josh finishes his pitch that he’ll be telling Julian all about it and he’ll be dropping everything once more for Josh. Oh, Julian will be at his side the whole time that’s for sure but old habits die hard and Josh came running so Sam was dropping everything.

It always came back to Josh.


End file.
